Rejection
hurt, even for the lowly fly. Researchers discovered that sex-deprived
fruit flies will drown their sorrows in booze:

To see how sex impacts fly drinking, the researchers placed virgin
male flies in a dish with either virgin females or with already-mated
females, which unlike the virgins will reject the males.

The male flies were paired up three times a day for four days before
they were given the opportunity to booze it up: They were offered regular
food and food with 15 percent alcohol. Mated flies drank almost no alcohol,
preferring the booze-free food, while rejected flies drank twice their
body weight's worth. Virgin males that had never been paired up with
a female in the lab were somewhere in the middle: moderate drinkers.

"From the experiments we've done, our hypothesis is that it
[alcohol] affects the fly's brain in a way similar to how it affects
ours," Shohat-Ophir said.